Sunday Drive in Ohio – A Poem

in the grass trampled
flat
into ruts gouged
by tractors
running along the side of the cornfields

in your people whose hearts
are filled with love
and eyes with
suffering

in the grey stone buildings
weathered
and nakedly housing the
fleeting opportunities
of desperate lives

in the goldenrod and new england aster
growing wild
by the roadside
the smell of asphalt swirling
across them
and their pollen swept up
by a vigorous gust
scattered
and lost
in the wall of the trees covering the hills

in the ghosts in the valley
rising ceaselessly
heavenward
from the tall chimneys
of the power company

in the rocky cliffs where your ancestors
are eternally etched
and their reliefs refined daily by
the passing wind
and rain